Ricoh Offers a Single-Pass Color Printer

In the laser printer market, Ricoh printers have been notably missing from the radar screen. The Ricoh Aficio AP3800C single-pass color laser (base unit, $4,995 list; as tested, $7,695) should help change that. This fast, heavy-duty color laser printerwhich is also sold as the Savin SLP38c, Lanier 2138, and the Gestetner GSc38boasts a 38-page-per-minute (ppm) rated speed in monochrome, 28 ppm in color, and a full set of paper-handling options including duplexing, stapling, sorting, and hole-punching, with a maximum paper size of 12 by 18 inches.

The printer is normally sold by resellers, with setup included in the already attractive price. The AP3800C comes with three drivers, PCL5c; Adobe PostScript 3, which Ricoh recommends for best color quality; and Ricoh's own RPCS (refined printing command stream), which Ricoh says is the fastest. The Ricoh-designed single-pass engine delivered on its speed potential, churning out 35.1 to 35.6 ppm (depending on which driver we used) for our 100-page monochrome text file, and 24.8 to 25.2 ppm for color text. For our three color photos, the RPCS driver was indeed faster: 0.7 to 0.9 ppm at 1,200 dpi, compared with 0.3 ppm for PostScript.

Text is sharp and easily readable at sizes as small as 4 points. Color quality is a little shy of best-of-breed color lasers (notably the Xerox Phaser 7700DN we reviewed in our October 30, 2001 issue). We noted a lack of subtle shading, as well as sudden jumps in shading in areas that should change gradually. In graphics, this sometimes showed as obvious banding.

SmartNet, Ricoh's network administration software, lets you create groups of printers to ease management tasks. But it's not as robust or intuitive as the leading utilities in the field (HP's JetAdmin comes to mind): It's not obvious how to use some features; documentation comes only as a PDF file; and the online help file doesn't always match the program. The client software for workstations fares better on usability, with a self-explanatory print monitor feature that lets users see the printer status and access loads of output options (duplex, booklet, sorting, stapling, and so on).

All in all, the Ricoh Aficio AP3000C is a fine package that can easily serve as the workhorse printer for a department or large workgroup.

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a...

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